The Wall of Shame

Tobacco is probably one of the most complicated products to be sorted due to often occurring color variations within single leaves themselves but also because of the sheer diversity of NTRM. Additionally, NDTP like moldy leaves, tobacco stalks, off-grades and unwanted parts of the actual tobacco plant are generally present. Not all of these NTRM/NDTP find their way into tobacco product by accident or due to the farming or harvesting methods deployed. On some rare occasions they are introduced deliberately. “Farmers are usually being paid by bale weight, which may sometimes prompt them to hide heavy and dense items such as rocks and metal pieces in the bales to drive up the weight,” said TOMRA’s Lars Janssens. Another example would be that leaves in bale cores are soaked in water, again to make the bales heavier.

But this dishonest practice also can easily cause leaves to mold or rot, and they need to be ejected during sorting. Yet such blunt attempts at fraud are still nothing compared to some of the truly mind-boggling NTRP that are frequently discovered during sorting. “A lot of threshing plant maintain a ‘wall of shame’ which displays the most unusual items recovered from tobacco. That ranges from cell phones to condoms, from flip flops to gloves and even wrist watches,” smirked Janssens. He recounted a story from one of TOMRA’s biggest customers in the U.S., where “a glove went through the threshers, and its pieces were afterwards removed by our post-threshing sorter.” The plant’s management then painstakingly stitched the obliterated glove back together to display it on its wall of shame. “Rats and snakes also tend to nest inside bales to keep themselves warm,” Janssens added, “and when these go through a slicer… oh, well…”